By ROBERT MCCLURE, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, April 9, 2007

Sitting outside to enjoy a summer day while she did some embroidery, Judy Pickens noticed her eyes were beginning to bother her. Was it her contacts? Pollen? But she also had a sore throat. Was she coming down with a cold?

Pickens went inside, and she got better. But the irritation returned when she ventured outside again the next day, and then again soon after.

"I kept thinking: What is wrong with me?" Pickens said. Pretty soon, she realized it probably had something to do with that awful smell that sometimes wafts through her West Seattle neighborhood, the scent that "reminds me of high school chemistry, when we mixed stuff together."

Eventually the stench was traced to seaweed rotting on the beach. When the weather turns hot, the rotting produces hydrogen sulfide -- which, yeah, smells like some experiments in high school chemistry.

The nasty odor outside Pickens' home above Fauntleroy Cove in the early 1980s marked the first public notice of what has become an increasingly common phenomenon: Apparently gorged on sewage and polluted runoff, a seaweed known as sea lettuce is growing in great green gobs at coves and bays around Puget Sound. It indicates a probable imbalance in the ecosystem, state officials and alarmed residents say.

"Green tides," they call the windrows and heaps that invade the beaches some summers.

It's another red flag that signals urgency about the need to restore Puget Sound, state officials fear.

The phenomenon isn't new, but what worries observers is that the sea lettuce appears to be growing rapidly, probably fueled by population growth and development in the region. It's poorly understood -- largely because no one has spent much time studying it.

The Legislature is trying to find a way to deal with it, but without a lot of success.

A 2000 report by the state government's Puget Sound Action Team examined the problem at more than 20 spots around the Sound. Since then, it's also cropped up at Dumas Bay in Federal Way, off southern Bainbridge Island and near Seattle's Shilshole Bay.

No one yet understands all the factors that influence the phenomenon.

"There seems to be an increase in the amount of sea lettuce in Puget Sound," Greg Bargmann of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife told Federal Way residents recently. "It just seems that we're getting more and more reports from residents of seaweed piled 6 or 12 inches high."

One resident troubled by the seaweed is Gale Cool, who lives by the beach on Bainbridge Island.

"I really began to notice it in the last few years, especially," Cool said. "Why is there getting to be more and more?"

Scientists have been warning for some time that increasing urbanization and the resulting dirty water that runs off after it rains are polluting the Sound. That rainwater carries with it nitrogen, which encourages the growth of plants and has been linked by scientists to seaweed blooms worldwide.

Nitrogen also is dumped as part of treated sewage. And it comes out of septic tanks.

Ron Thom, a marine biologist who has studied Puget Sound seaweeds since the early 1980s, says sea lettuce blooms here appear to be related to such factors as increased fertilization of lawns and runoff from streets.

"It's linked to development and population," Thom said.

Since her eyes started smarting outside her Fauntleroy Cove home years ago, Pickens has become one of the most engaged people in the region regarding the seaweed blooms. When Federal Way officials organized a recent meeting for aggrieved citizens living near Dumas Bay, she was one of the featured speakers -- the only one who didn't work for the government.

"You make me feel quite old," she told the group. "Fauntleroy has been dealing with this for 25 years."

Pickens is far from the only person to suffer health effects because of the seaweed. It has caused tearing eyes and shortness of breath in some other residents. It produces massive quantities of hydrogen sulfide, which smells a lot like sewage but is more dangerous.

Most of the affected areas identified in the state's 2000 report include a stream emptying into the bay or cove, or a sewage outfall, or both. Both can carry nitrogen.

Under natural conditions, sea lettuce is part of the ecosystem. It's food for small fish and some birds, for example. But under those natural conditions, the amount of nitrogen drops off to low levels in the summer, limiting how much the sea lettuce can grow.

Today's blooms appear to be fueled by pollution draining off big swaths of the landscape, meaning that people living far away from the beach can help pollute the Sound.

And once an extra-large bloom gets under way, it can be capable of feeding itself as it rots, releasing nitrogen that is then washed back into the water on the next tide.

Another factor possibly at work is waterfront development, the 2000 state report said. Building sea walls prevents sand from being washed onto beaches. That leaves behind rocky areas that are favored by the sea lettuce. Virtually all the places identified in the report had development-altered shorelines.

The stink is far from the only result of the ecological imbalance. For example, it appears that in some places sea lettuce grows prolifically enough to shade out and kill eelgrass, which serves a number of key ecological functions, including sheltering young salmon.

Seaweed blooms were noted in the Sound as early as the 1930s, although it was Fauntleroy where they first came to officials' attention. Two massive hauls of sea lettuce have been taken from that beach and dumped into Puget Sound.

With Dumas Bay and Fauntleroy residents pushing for action, the Legislature this year considered a bill that would have allowed people living near beaches where this is a problem to tax themselves. The money could be used to hire scientific experts and tugboats to haul the stinky messes away.

But that faced opposition, in part because people living near the beach are not the only ones contributing to the pollution.

So for now, the state Senate's budget includes $300,000 to do more haul outs.

No money is included in the House budget.

But what's really needed, Pickens and others say, is a comprehensive look at the phenomenon and, at least in some places, steps to intercept the urban pollution that appears to be fueling the great green gobs of goo.

"It's fairly easy to get a diagnosis of the problem, but then what?" Pickens asked. "We need to get this situated with an agency that will take a Sound-wide view. ... I'm tired of rolling this stone up the hill."